


Hope

by brightingales (zoeteniets)



Category: Hollyoaks
Genre: Domestic, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 10:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19885903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoeteniets/pseuds/brightingales
Summary: James Nightingale builds a nursery.For the HappyJarryHolidays prompt - Green: nature, growth, envy...





	Hope

They agree to take things slowly.

It’s for James’s benefit, as much as his own, but Harry can’t help but notice how every meeting between the two of them has been carefully constructed to make Harry feel as comfortable as possible. Their dates are only even held in public places – The Bean, The Hutch, The Dog – with Harry acutely aware of the eyes watching them, waiting to step in should James put so much of a toe out of line. Conversation topics have been selected beforehand and James always seems to be sticking to a safe script of questions to ask Harry. They talk about films (always a shared love, even if their tastes remain wildly different), music, the food, their families… James even asks him about the football season and how well Harry’s team is doing. He’s making a real effort, and it shows.

Harry can’t decide if he’s annoyed or oddly charmed by James’s insistence that they date to a formula. He almost feels like they’re a courting couple in a Restoration romance like in the novels that James hides under the bed. They can’t go anywhere without a chaperone. They can’t stay out past eleven pm. They can’t touch bare skin above the wrist… It’s frustrating, and frankly upsetting, to Harry who genuinely meant it when he said, ‘I want things to go back to the way they were between us.’ But James has always been feet-first when it comes to Harry, and the restraint he is showing now only proves how much he wants to repair the damage he wrought.

So, they date – outside and in the open so that anyone can intervene the moment Harry feels even the slightest bit uncomfortable. He doesn’t. He might be mad, but he doesn’t.

It takes him a few weeks to persuade James to take him back to the flat. James eventually relents but makes a big show of ensuring that either Marnie or Romeo is there. Harry makes an equally big show of saying how much he misses being home and how he wants to be alone with James and how it’s funny that James is being so cautious with him when Harry is a big boy who can make his own decisions.

“It’s not just you though – is it?” James says quietly, hiding his ashamed eyes in his wine glass. 

He’s got a point. There’s Isaac to think of now.

While Harry would never push James into something that he is uncomfortable with, he also knows that James’s self-deprecating nature will probably make him think that he’s made way less progress with his therapist than Harry knows he has. And Harry knows – because he and James talk about it. ‘My therapist says’ is one of those safe topics of conversation, though Harry can see James’s internal wince every time he says it. So, Harry encourages him as best he can without making it seem like he’s pushing too hard to force their relationship back on track. He texts James every day so that he knows Harry is thinking of him. He sends pictures of Isaac being cute so that James feels like part of his life too. He makes sure that James knows that the reason Harry schedules their dates so early in the day is so that they can spend as much of their time together. Each action is a crack in James’s armour, a balm on the wound, a look filled with hope.

Harry has made his choice. It’s James – it will always be James. Now James just needs to make his.

He’s a bit surprised when James asks him around one afternoon. The flat has become their after-date sanctuary and James very rarely asks him to meet there. 

“I’ve got something to show you,” James explains.

Romeo and Marnie are there, of course, but when James leads him through the flat and towards the stairs, they do not follow. Instead, they hold hot mugs of coffee to their lips and smile at him through the steam.

He doesn’t dare hope that James is leading him back to their bedroom – that they’ll finally be able to shut the world out and just be with one another again. But James passes the door and reaches instead for the handle of the spare room.

The first thing Harry notices is the smell of wet paint. The windows are thrown wide open, but the acidic tinge is still lingering in the air. The walls are painted a soothing colour of mint green – the same shade as the walls of the corridor. Green is James’s favourite colour, so this is hardly surprising, but it looks to Harry that he’s just used leftover paint rather than choosing something new. Whatever James has done – it was done in a hurry.

Breathing through the paint fumes, Harry turns his attention to the furniture. If he had any doubts about this room and what its purpose is, they are quickly dispelled.

Taking pride-of-place in the middle of the room is a beautiful, white crib.

Harry’s brain takes a moment to process what is going on around him. In the corner of the room is a large dresser. A baby changing station is set up on top of it and Harry just knows that if he were to open the drawers, he would find many sets of miniature clothes all waiting to be put onto Isaac’s squirmy little body. In another corner, there are shelves of books and small knick-knacks that must have taken ages to collect. And pushed against the side of the room is a big squishy sofa with a soft fleece thrown over.

Harry goes to the crib. Above it hangs a mobile of different brightly coloured shapes. Most of these things that Harry has seen before (indeed the one that hangs over Isaac’s crime in his room at his dad’s place) are quite cheesy and tacky – with smiling cartoon characters made of obnoxiously coloured plastic. But James has managed to find a baby’s mobile that wouldn’t look out of place in one of those modern art galleries that James was always threatening to take him to. It looks like the sort of thing a parent who expects their child to become an architect would buy. Harry wonders if James had a similar motive when he bought it and his heart leaps at the idea that James might have thought about Isaac’s future and his own place in it.

Obviously, he has. Why else would he have made this nursery?

While the mobile is structural and classy, there is one cartoon animal to be found. Tucked inside the crib is a cuddly-toy lemur.

James must see Harry staring at it because he nervously coughs and says, “I remember you saying that some baby lemurs had been born at Chester zoon. I had planned to take you to go and see them on a weekend out, but then, everything happened… and I…”

He steps forward from where he’s been standing aside letting Harry explore the room, and fishes the toy out of the crib, holding it against his chest. The gesture makes James look so small and lost and vulnerable that Harry doesn’t know how he could ever have doubted his love for this man.

“I thought,” James continues, “that Isaac might inherit your love for small primates. I went up to the zoo on my own, and got this for him from the gift-shop.”

“James, this is… I don’t know what to say…” Harry can’t quite get his voice above a whisper.

“You don’t like it?”

“No. James, I love it!”

Looking at the way James is clutching the toy lemur to his chest makes him feel oddly envious. He wants to be the one that James is holding like that. So, he carefully takes the toy from him, takes James’s hands, and winds them around his own waist. More than anything that has happened today, standing here in a nursery that the man he loves has built for his son, finally being back in James’s arms is the thing that makes him feel most at home.

There’s so much to talk about, so after a few moments of simply standing together, swaying slightly with the force of their own heartbeats, Harry manoeuvres them so that they sink down onto the comfy sofa. Except, after a moment or two, Harry realises that it’s not quite as comfortable as he had expected. He sifts around a bit trying to find a position where he can both wrap himself around James and not have part of the sofa sticking into his back.

James notices his discomfort; “Sofa-beds are never as comfortable as the real thing; I’m sorry.”

“This is a sofa-bed?”

It’s James’s turn to shift around now, turning himself so that he can look Harry directly in the eye.

“I know I destroyed any trust that there was between us. And I still can’t quite believe that you’re willing to give us another chance. I don’t want you to ever feel like you are unsafe with me, but I know I have no right to ask you to trust me like that again. So, the sofa bed is here. If you want to stay over then you have this place, this space, just for you. And Isaac of course.”

Harry chooses his next words carefully.

“I know that you don’t think that you have made enough progress. But I can already see just how much you have grown.” He cups James’s face in his palms. “You’ve made space for me and Isaac in your life and you’ve tried so hard to make sure that we’re both comfortable and safe. I love you, James.”

“I love you too,” James replies. “I just don’t know if I can trust myself again.”

“That’s ok – I’ve got enough trust for the both of us. For the three of us, even.”

He leans up slightly so that he can press a small kiss to James’s lips. When he pulls back, James’s green eyes shine with tears. And underneath that – hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I don't know what canon is doing right now either. Let's just pretend for now that in a few months everything will be fine and nothing will hurt (and I say 'pretend' because this is a soap - we been knew babe). 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @brightingales .


End file.
